My 19-year-old niece will be spending a semester in Maastricht, Netherlands from Jan to Jun 2007. (My husband and I are her guardians.) She will also be traveling around Europe during her stay.
She has a tri-band cell phone which we know works in Europe. However, we're considering Mobal, United phone or Riiing for her long-term use. We don't mind buying another cell phone for this purpose.
Cingular was charging 99 cents/min on our last trip to Europe (a trip of only 2 weeks' duration) which is kind of steep for a several month visit.
I've read most of the current threads on this board, but does anyone have personal experience with these providers for an extended stay?
Cell phone use for college student in Netherlands
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Probably the best solution is to simply buy one of the pay as you go sim cards such as from united-mobile.com. You certainly don't want to sign up for a long term contract and don't even consider using something as expensive as Cingular.
BTW...
Riiing and United Mobile are one and the same.....
Having said that united mobile works exactly as has been described and during the past couple of weeks when I was in Europe worked perfectly coupled with callbackworld which I have described.
However, it would be my guess that for the time your niece is in Holland, she would be best with a local Dutch sim which she can easily buy while there. Perhaps it would be best for her to wait to see what her friends use or the university may have special deals with various Dutch pay as you go providers.
Now the beauty of GSM is that you can easily switch the sim card so when she starts travelling through Europe, she can simply switch the Dutch sim card for a United Mobile card...or
The EU is currently pushing very hard on European gsm providers to lower asininely high roaming rates within Europe..it is very possible that at some point in early 2007 their regs will take effect and dramatically lower intra European roaming rates..in which case she might be fine simply with the Dutch sim so she can wait on the United Mobile card which may or may not be necessary when she leaves Holland so...
Summing it up...I would make sure she has an unlocked gsm tri band phone (making sure please the bands are 900/1800/1900) or a European dual band (900/1800) or a quad band)...let her wait till she gets to Holland and buy a local Dutch prepaid sim and then depending on what happens with the EU stance on roaming, she can get a United Mobile sim if necessary at a later date and simply switch the sim cards.
Thank you Jack and xyz both for your replies.
xyz - I really appreciate your patience in answering me. I know this question has been asked to death and it can get tiresome.
But you did a great job of trying to straighten this out for me and alerting me as to what is in store in 2007. I think I can handle it from here.
Again, many thanks,
canterbury